Dennis Prager wrote a list in an article called “If God Doesn’t Exist”. The article was so poorly thought out that I decided it would be fun to debunk his list. Here is a rebuttal to Pragers list from a rational perspective. I am not an atheist or an agnostic or a theist. I suspect that there may be a God but I am also aware that I could be dead wrong. I am certainly not a Christian and do not believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God. Pragers list is chalked so full of logical fallacies and weak arguments that I couldn’t help myself, here goes…….



1. Without God there is no good and evil; there are only subjective opinions that we then label "good" and "evil." This does not mean that an atheist cannot be a good person. Nor does it mean that all those who believe in God are good; there are good atheists and there are bad believers in God. It simply means that unless there is a moral authority that transcends humans from which emanates an objective right and wrong, "right" and "wrong" no more objectively exist than do "beautiful" and "ugly."

*Of course, we do this anyway with things that are not mentioned specifically in the Bible. Ask enough people and you will find that everything in the world is considered evil by someone. Right and wrong are subjective with and without  God because the Bible is not clear enough to be agreed upon by everyone who reads it.

There is nothing in the Bible that says that abortion is a sin. There are hundreds of verses in the Bible that one could translate from a certain perspective to mean that abortion is a sin but the Bible itself never does. Christians love to take the Bible and manipulate it fit their worldview. I know Christians who don’t believe that abortion is evil and I know Christians who do think it’s evil. That right there tells me that neither one of them actually knows for sure if it’s evil (according to the Bible that is) or not.

 2. Without God, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.
                                                      
*Wrong. Life is a beautiful thing with or without God. The meaning of life to an atheist could be to take care of his family or to raise his children right so that the future is favorable in later generations. To say that there is no meaning to life without God is a negative, cynical, unrealistic opinion. The meaning of life is variable upon each person.


3. Life is ultimately a tragic fare if there is no God. We live, we suffer, we die -- some horrifically, many prematurely -- and there is only oblivion afterward.


*This statement was written with the same mindset as statement #2. Why such negativity? Living and dying aren’t tragic things. Not everybody suffers. Life is beautiful despite the fact that we all die. Even if God does exist we still all live and die and some of us still suffer. Personally I would rather be a homeless bum begging for change to survive then to never have been born at all, that’s how much I cherish life. Why are religious people always so negative and depressing?

                                                   
4. Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One's heart is often no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong way to fly an airplane. The post-religious secular world claims to need no manual; the heart and reason are sufficient guides to leading a good life and to making a good world.

*No we don’t. Who do you think you are buddy? You may need an instruction manual because you are that weak minded. Me? I’m fine, I learned how to walk, love, and show compassion without instruction books. People are not as stupid as Prager thinks they are. This statement just shows what kind of person he really is. Maybe he thinks we are all robots or something.


5. If there is no God, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder have no better a fate after death than do the most cruel torturers and mass murderers. Only if there is a good God do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler have different fates.

*Not necessarily but I’ll agree for the sake of argument. What is it in human nature that makes us view the world as unfair if murderers aren’t tortured for eternity? Why does it make some people feel good to know that someone else is suffering? It’s a disgusting mindset that people need to drop.

Also the statement was mis-worded in a deceiving way. If you notice it say’s  “innocent victims of torture have no better fate after death than do murderers.” But really what it is saying is “Murderers have no worse fate than innocent victims…” Because people like Prager assume that life isn’t fair unless someone else is suffering. If there is no God then we most likely all share the same fate, none worse none better.

6. With the death of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many Westerners believe in little. That is why secular Western Europe has been unwilling and therefore unable to confront evil, whether it was Communism during the Cold War or Islamic totalitarians in its midst today.

What? You’re a lunatic! I’m not sure if you are aware that there are European soldiers in Iraq right now as we speak confronting “evil” to protect you and me. Ever heard of Tony Blair? Winston Churchill? Read a history book, an economics book and a politics 101 book before writing anymore non-sense. The secular European countries you are referring to aren’t as likely to get involved in other countries business in order to push their religious agenda on people as the Christians in the U.S. are. That’s a good thing. Those secular countries all have lower crimes rates, lower homeless and unemployment rates and overall better quality of life than America. Coincidence?

7. Without God, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly irrational doctrine of Marxism. It was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed that men's and women's natures are basically the same, that perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced. Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm

Wrong. There is nothing that contradicts the dictionary definition of the word rational more than the belief in an invisible man in the sky who created everything without one single shed of empirical evidence to back up the claim. Get a dictionary while you’re at it. Rational thinkers require evidence before they invest their life into an idea.

8. If there is no God, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.

Even with God humans have no free will. Can I behead my neighbor and eat his brain without asking Jesus for forgiveness and still go to heaven for eternity? No? Then I don’t have free will. Can I refuse to worship or acknowledge the existence of God and still go to heaven? No? Then I don’t have free will. God himself doesn’t even have free will since He Himself cannot even look at evil or speak evil. Free will means you can do anything and everything you want to do. None of us have free will.

9. If there is no God, humans and "other" animals are of equal value. Only if one posits that humans, not animals, are created in the image of God do humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.

All life is of equal value. That is what’s wrong with modern Christianity, they believe that only some life is worth preserving while my atheist friends will tell you that ALL life is worth preserving. Who’s more compassionate?

10. Without God, there is little to inspire people to create inspiring art. That is why contemporary art galleries and museums are filled with "art" that celebrates the scatological, the ugly and the shocking. Compare this art to Michelangelo's art in the Sistine chapel. The latter elevates the viewer -- because Michelangelo believed in something higher than himself and higher than all men.

This is a fallacious statement that actually doesn’t even make sense. In a Christian view without God there would be nothing period let alone nothing to inspire art which renders the argument null because how would someone created art if that someone never existed to begin with? You see? Silliness.

11. Without God nothing is holy. This is definitional. Holiness emanates from a belief in the holy. This explains, for example, the far more widespread acceptance of public cursing in secular society than in religious society. To the religious, there is holy speech and profane speech. In much of secular society the very notion of profane speech is mocked.

Also a fallacious argument. One could say that without the magician nothing can be magical. Magic emanates from a belief in magic. It makes no sense. The word Holy is definitional which makes this a useless argument.

12. Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.

Not necessarily. Here is a scenario. Let’s pretend that we all agree that aliens exist just for the sake of argument. If a super intelligent, hyper advanced species of aliens from a civilization on a distant planet came to Earth then Humans would not be the dominant species. We haven’t discovered every form of life that exist in the universe and therefore cannot claim that man is dominant as a species.

The term Supreme Being is also subjective. I personal don’t consider any being as supreme to another being and I’m just fine with that.

13. Without God, there are no inalienable human rights. Evolution confers no rights. Molecules confer no rights. Energy has no moral concerns. That is why America's Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed "by our Creator" with certain inalienable rights. Rights depend upon a moral source, a rights giver.

Why do humans need a God to have rights? If there is no God then, as Prager stated above, we would be the Supreme Being. If that is the case then we dictate who has rights and who doesn’t. Even with a God in the picture some people don’t have basic human rights. Prager believes in withholding gays the right to marry. And here I was thinking that Jesus would have preferred that everyone have the same rights because all people are equal. Silly me. Why doesn’t God give those poor, war ravaged people of Africa inalienable human rights?

Evolution has nothing to do with God. God can exist and evolution be true at the same time, neither is in competition with the other. Evolution doesn’t explain how life started. Evolution is a fact of life and if you disagree you are a foolish conspiracy theorists who must think that every scientist in the world is out to kill belief God. Laughable.

14. "Without God," Dostoevsky famously wrote, "all is permitted." There has been plenty of evil committed by believers in God, but the widespread cruelties and the sheer number of innocents murdered by secular regimes -- specifically Nazi, Fascist and Communist regimes -- dwarfs the evil done in the name of religion.


All is permitted anyways, isn’t that what free will is? You can’t have your cake and eat it too Mr. Prager. If you bothered to do your research you'd know that Hitler was religious. not secular. As far as atheists regimes go, you cannot compare them to religious regimes. Religious regimes have killed millions in the name of God. Atheists regimes have never killed anybody in the name of a deity and therefore do not kill in the name of. If you bothered to pick up a history book you would also notice that Christians (RCC) have murdered far, far, far more people than any secular regime ever has.


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I doubt that Mr. Prager will actually read this or if he does I doubt he will respond but it’s worth a try. God knows I can’t call into his show and debate because he has a bad habit of hanging up on people and putting words into their mouth when they disagree with him. Typical Conservative Christian.